Is the PS4 a Game-Changer? What Game Makers Are Saying

Andrew House, president and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, speaks during the unveiling of the PlayStation 4 launch event in New York, February 20, 2013.

Sony officially announced the PlayStation 4 last night at an event in New York City, ending months of feverish speculation with more of a whimper than a bang as it left many unanswered questions like what the console actually looks like, how much it will cost, and when it will be available at retail.

The details that Sony did clarify about the new device were certainly impressive. But making a successful console is just as challenging as it is to come up unique and compelling content for the device. The entire business model that the big three console developers—Sony Microsoft, and Nintendo—employ to support their gadgets operates under that old “Field of Dreams” adage: “if you build it, they will come.” Basically: build an impressive console, attract a lot of users, and developers of all shapes and sizes will flock to it.

“The most important thing for them is to have developers,” Melissa Otto, an analyst at TIAA-CREF, said of the PlayStation 4. “That’s what pulls consumers in and makes them want to buy it.” So who, or what, is coming to the PlayStation 4 exactly? Yesterday, we gave you the key details that gamers need to know about the PS4. But what about the game makers themselves? Speakeasy spoke to some developers in attendance at Sony’s event last night. Here’s what they had to say.

The “remote play” features are promising, but could pose challenges for studios.

Speaking to a small number of reporters after the official announcement, developers from Guerrilla Games and Evolution Studios—makers of the PS4 launch titles Killzone: Shadowfall and Drive Club, respectively—sang Sony’s praises for the level of mobile integration featured in the new console. Remote play is a “very powerful thing to do at a system level,” Guerrilla’s managing director Hermen Hulst said. But while the feature sounds impressive, it may place undue burdens on studios already pressed for time and resources, particularly for small independent studios. Matt Southern, a game director at Evolution working on Drive Club, said that his studio has all but become a “multiplatform developer” to suit the expectations for the new device. Does this mean that all PlayStation games will come with a fully-fledged Vita version as well in the future? Not necessarily. “You’re going to have to pick your battles,” Hulst said when asked about a possible Killzone Vita title.

Sony and Microsoft are going to have to woo developers when competing for next-generation exclusivity.

A big surprise from Sony’s keynote was the appearance of Jonathan Blow, one of the most famous independent developers in the industry known for his less-than-polite takedowns of corporate interests and their influence on the artistry of game design. Suddenly the man who famously pilloried World of Warcraft as being little more than a “drug” that eats away the lives of its core players was speaking in line with Activision Blizzard developers. Why the sudden change of heart? In 2011, Blow called Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade a “pain in the ass” for indie developers like himself. Ironically enough, he also said in the same interview that “there’s no need” to enter into exclusive contracts. Putting his next game on the PS4 as a console exclusive is his way of lending his support to the developer ecosystem he prefers by letting Sony woo him away from Microsoft—sort of voting with his videogame.

Big developers are still going to call the shots.

Eric Hirschberg, Activision so CEO of publishing, appeared at the event last night to say that his company will “support the PlayStation 4″ with several titles arriving within the “launch window.” There were some surprises here, particularly from Blizzard, which announced that it was going to bring its flagship PC gaming franchise Diablo to consoles for the first time in its almost twenty-year year history. But Hirschberg made sure to note that Activision would be supporting Sony, not letting Sony support Activision. The difference here is that Activision, unlike Jonathan Blow, would probably never enter into an exclusive contract with one console manufacturer when it still has the most commercially successful franchise in the industry. The same goes for Ubisoft, which said it will make Watch Dogs a PS4 launch title. Harold Ryan, president of Bungie, said that the studio’s new game Bungie will “feature exclusive in-game content, only available on PlayStation,” but it’s unclear what that content is going to be, and even if it will be exclusive to the PlayStation 4, since Destiny is also coming out on the PlayStation 3.

The PlayStation store could offer unprecedented support to a variety of different retail models.

Consoles, and AAA games more generally, have traditionally been sold at a premium price of $50 or $60 for a boxed copy packaged like a DVD. Mobile and social games from companies like Zynga, however, have started to change that with free-to-play games that attract massive audiences and monetize themselves in any number of clever (if slightly sleazy) ways. Because of their long lifecycles, consoles have been slow to adapt to this new market in the way that smartphone operating systems or social networks like Facebook have been able to, which put console developers at a disadvantage when it came to attracting indie developers looking for the cheapest and easiest way to start distributing their games. Sony said that it will make the PlayStation Network and PlayStation Store both more open to alternative retail models like offering freemium or episodic gameplay, though it remains to be seen how well this will work in attracting smaller talent. The Drive Club and Killzone developers would not comment on any of their games’ pricing or release information. Indie developers, meanwhile, have been mostly left out of planning for the new console but remain eager to find a new platform that can help share their work with a wider audience. “I don’t want to say anything yet because I haven’t been able to work on the PlayStation 4,” Ramiro Corbetta, an indie developer currently working on a PSN game called Sportfriends that narrowly passed its Kickstarter goal last year, said after the Sony announcement Wednesday night. “But Sony has been awesome to work with in my experience.”